


'Man and Machine

by Sileas333



Category: Knight Rider (1982), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Sentience, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sileas333/pseuds/Sileas333
Summary: Would you have the ballz to be on the phone with the most sophisticated AI in the world while you're at an artificial intelligence convention where they're still struggling to do math on their fingers? It's all fun and games until somebody divides by zero and you end up in a parking lot at midnight, talking to a car.





	

Lois Lane Kent sat in the large lobby of the convention center, her laptop balanced on her knees while she typed. She hadn’t been very interested in this story at first, but having been here for a few hours, she was now having trouble deciding which story to run with. The West Coast Artificial Intelligence Convention pulled the top minds in the world of artificial intelligence and she had gone from indifferent to fascinated in two hours.

She heard a familiar voice and looked up. "I can’t decide between practical or theoretical," her husband said, setting his laptop and recorder down next to her before he sat down. "We could split that into two stories and I’d still have trouble deciding."

"Good, it’s not just me," Lois said, going back to typing. "I hereby forgive you the time you spent talking to that bot last night."

Clark Kent grinned. "It was pretty good, hey. You have to start asking specific questions on non-routine topics before it gets confused."

"What’s Ulrich’s first name again?"

"G-e-r-n-o-t," Clark supplied. "Don’t ask me how we’re going to get in to talk to him, though."

Lois gave a one-shouldered shrug, still typing. "Persistence, persistence, persistence. Oh, and name recognition."

"You know, I’ll bet we could do two stories, with the Mayberry hacks. I talked to Burt Stevenson from Firesafe and he thinks an AI could possibly help with finding those hacks."

"Detect the hack, or catch the hackers?" Lois saved her article and closed the laptop.

"He didn’t say anything about catching–I’m sure it was just detecting. Finding where hacks come from takes creativity and I’m thinking..." he trailed off and they both shook their heads.

"Well, I think I’m heading outside, see who I can catch on break," Lois said, stowing her laptop in her bag and taking out her recorder.

"Oh, hey," Clark said mildly, pointing. "That bright light out there."

Lois turned and saw where he was pointing. "Huh. Yeah. I hear it’s called the sun."

"First time in...a week? Oh–there’s Ming Sun, coincidentally," Clark said, seeing a Chinese woman in the lobby. "I’m going to ask a couple of follow-up questions."

Lois looked back and nodded as she went for the doors. Clark stayed, catching up with the scientist, and waited his turn as she already had a couple of reporters talking to her. He used his recorder, even though he really didn’t need to, and cleaned up the few issues he found from his article. He decided to follow Lois outside to the large terrace to work. He caught the door for a woman following him a pace or two back, seeing she had her foot in a cast. "Because we need these powerful hydraulics," he commented dryly, getting a short laugh from the woman.

He found a clear table and set up his laptop to finish the story, reading a few articles on the Turing intelligence test for more background. He glanced up and noticed that the woman in the ankle cast was at the next table, using an iPad. He thought nothing more of her until a few minutes later when she turned away from him in a protective curl, cellphone in hand. The posture made a small question mark show up on his mental bulletin board, but his rational mind took it down. She’s used to phone calls in a crowded or noisy environment, he said with a mental shrug. Only 20 feet away, though, he was close enough to hear that her phone call was answered within a fraction of a second, before she even got the phone to her ear.

"Hi! I’m not calling at a bad time, am I?"

_"No—entirely clear. We’re on to simple mechanical cleaning. How are you?"_

Husband, he decided, and tossed the question mark into the garbage. It was a male voice and there was friendly warmth on both sides of the call.

"Fine. We’re in between–"

_"How is your ankle?"_

"It’s good, and yes, I’m wearing the CAM walker," she said with dutiful submission.

 _"You’re not having any pain?"_ Alright, her husband is a doctor.

"No, it’s fine! No pain."

_"You haven’t been walking a lot, have you? Do they have wheelchairs–"_

"Mother hen, I’m fine!" the woman said with exasperation, but there was still warmth in her chuckle. "There is no pain. It’s fine!"

_"You do know I worry about you."_

"Yes, I know, and it’s appreciated, but really, I am fine. I’m not into pain, I’m not doing anything foolish. I did walk outside and a veeerrrry good-looking man held the door for me, and I’m sitting down right now at the terrace and my ankle is pain-free."

_"I can’t help thinking that if I had been there, I could have melted the ice for you."_

"I’m not bringing you to Canada to melt a patch of ice for me," she said with almost condescending sincerity.

_"I know but....I just keep thinking how many times you repaired me, and now you’re hurt and I can’t seem to do a thing."_

"Oh, you’re sweet, but....humans have—different mechanics."

Repaired, mechanics...separately the words would be considered innocuous, but both of them combined to put the question mark back up on Clark’s bulletin board.

_"I know. Maybe sometimes I wish I could do something for someone—"_

"You do. You’re a lifesaver. End of discussion."

There was a sigh. _"If you insist."_

"Now, the real reason I called–Ulrich _did_ come, and I don’t think he’s going to be on a panel, but he is here. The pred—"

_"Have you met him yet?"_

"Well....not yet. I guess I’ve been a little..shy..."

_"Bonnie, don’t shy out! It’s an incredible opportunity!"_

"I know, I will," the woman said sheepishly. "I have four days to work it up. But he did ask a question about heuristics and from what he said, I don’t think he’s even semi-retired. He’s on top of the latest developments, still thinking."

_"Goodness. Ninety-six years old."_

"I know–he’s a super ager. They needed to pass him the mic because his voice is soft, but he’s got all of his marbles."

_"And has gone out shopping for more, it seems."_

"Someone did mention his prediction, though, of an opening address."

_"An AI would be giving the opening address by the year 2015."_

The woman instinctively nodded agreement. "Yeah–I thought it was a taunt at first, because of who said it—Remering—but he was actually pretty respectful, considering."

_"Did anyone make a follow-up prediction?"_

"Not really, but that’s ok. I nominated you for next year."

_"What!?"_

For a brief moment, Clark’s jaw dropped. Was she actually talking to....? No, that didn’t make sense. If that was a computer, it would have to be many generations beyond what the current state of the art was, deep into the realm of science fiction. In any case, the emotional range–genuine caring concern, resignation, admonishment, admiration, and now startled panic—indicated the presence of sentience, and that property by definition could not be possessed by a computer.

"I’m kidding! I’m kidding!" the woman was repeating, around laughing at the panic she had elicited from the other side. "Oh, I’m going to remember that squawk!"

_"Bonnie, don’t scare me!"_

"I wouldn’t!" she said more firmly, around the giggling. "I’m not dumb. You’re better—oh! That was another thing I wanted to tell you!"

_"You’re not going to terrify me again, are you?"_

"No, no, no—this is—ok. Here’s what happened. I was...I think I was just sitting there in between panels, spaced off. I think I might have been thinking about your Inferno program or something, and I–someone asked me what I was thinking about, and, well, I couldn’t say what it was for real, so I just blurted out, ‘another language’. We talked about that for a little bit, but guess what I thought of?"

 _"I’m scared to ask,"_ came the fearful answer.

"Having an AI give the first address–that’s nothing. You know what would be a real tour de force? Is if you and I came up with a language!"

_"You mean....a computer language? You and me?"_

"Yeah! I mean, creating a new code, that would be..."

_"Nervy."_

"Well, no more nervy than, say....me using my cellphone to call a 35-year-old from an AI con," she said in a conspiratorial mutter. "Whose attendees have not thought of anything half as sparkling as said 35-year-old."

_"I’m just–would that be safe? For me? I mean, I couldn’t accidentally reprogram myself, could–"_

"Oh, heavens, no. Not any more than I could, like, cause a blizzard from cutting out a paper snowflake. I can write you a sandbox program. And we wouldn’t have to deal with a machine or a command language. We could do something simple, like maybe a query language."

_"I have to admit, that does sound interesting."_

_Re-program myself_....You have got to be kidding me, Clark thought with deliberate firmness. If he didn’t know any better, he would think that the woman knew who he was and was deliberately pranking him. If this really was an AI, it was so complex that it would make the experts at the convention turn off their computers with an air of quiet, satisfied finality. Why it was under wraps he didn’t know, but he was pretty certain that if it ever did come out of hiding, it would make a mockery of the current state of affairs.

He started to pay closer attention to the voice. It was a male voice, slightly nasal, with a Boston influence. None of the literature he had read mentioned vocal production. AI technology wasn’t contemplating interaction past text-based exchanges. And if that was what this AI sounded like, what did it look like? He had heard at least one sigh, and could even hear breath intake. It would seem to imply a human-like appearance, and if that appearance was anywhere near as sophisticated as its voice and thought patterns, it would be all but impossible to tell it wasn’t human.

"It wouldn’t be like the Inferno code load," the woman was saying. "We know what we did wrong there. That was the transfer protocols, and the new one isn’t something we’d be integrating. It’d be completely external."

_"How about an access language for an encyclopedia..."_

"Now, there’s a good start–"

_"Bonnie? One moment, I’m getting something unusual."_

"What? Do you need me to go?"

_"No, it’s not here, not with me. It’s...over the scanners, the police scanners."_

"What is it?"

_"It seems someone....oh, dear...someone’s hacking...Someone is hacking the Milltown lift bridge. One moment..."_

Alright, that changes things, Clark thought. He was familiar with that bridge and the story, having passed it off to a junior reporter when something bigger came up. The transportation department had just re-engineered that bridge with software rather than the archaic mechanical controls on the lift, and the road was now open for the first time in over a year and a half. If controls were being manipulated without safe closure of the road beforehand, there would be people trapped on the lift section that may or may not be able to take the additional weight.

_"Bonnie, I’m into their system. There’s an external ISP logged in right now. I can block it with a sub-routine of my Inferno code."_

"Send it to my iPad."

_"Right away, Bonnie."_

Trying to look casual, Clark closed up his laptop and pulled out his phone, sending Lois an automated text message with just two key presses. While the woman was focused intently on the communication, Clark was able to easily spot her name tag as he went past—Dr. Bonnie Barstow. More importantly, though, from several miles away he started to hear the sound of hundreds of tires squealing on warm concrete, and more than one sharp crunch of impact as the 60-miles-per-hour traffic was being forced to a sudden and complete halt. Maintaining a pace as quick as he could while still coming off as casual, Clark detoured to the left on reaching the building entrance, following the sidewalk. There was a pattern of decorative stonework along the length of the building, jutting out from the side by at least ten feet, and shrubs had been planted in the corners. As if it was made for him....

Moments later, a purple blur launched from that side of the building, too fast to be seen by human eyes. In a matter of seconds the blur arrived six and a half miles away to the four-lane lift bridge, the one-hundred-fifty-meter-long segment already at three meters and continuing to rise slowly. Five vehicles, one of them a semi, were caught by the lift, with either two front or two back wheels on the elevating section. The semi was caught at about one-third the length of its trailer. If the lift bridge got high enough, the semi would tip back and land on top of the cars trapped behind it.

Fortunately, many of the people had had the sense to get out of their vehicles, but at least one of the tilted cars and the semi were still occupied. Working quickly, Superman moved the two cars behind the semi, shifting them to the left to make more room. Moving to the semi, he braced himself underneath the trailer and lifted. The trailer came up level with the cab and he brought it up slightly higher, preventing the cab from swinging sharply around. The semi was deposited on the shoulder of the road leading up to the bridge, and then in short order, the four precariously tilted cars were moved as well. As he set the last car down, the lift bridge stopped. By the time he brought the occupants of the four cars trapped on the lifted section safely to the ground, the lift had reversed course and was starting to lower again. Four people got fast rides to the hospital, the worst injury a broken leg, and twenty minutes later, Superman was within a few hundred meters of the convention center again.

The woman, Dr. Barstow, was still at the table, and still engaged in her phone call. Her iPad was also getting use, as she maneuvered Google Maps around.

"...Faulin Street and 132nd," she was saying, studying the map intently. "Yes. Go for it."

_"I’m doing an anonymous tip call. If they get there quick enough, there should be plenty of evidence."_

Let’s just make sure the evidence stays, he thought. He switched direction, finding the intersection in moments, and listened carefully as he covered the four-block area. He quickly zeroed in on an incriminating conversation coming from one of the houses.

"It–I can’t. I don’t know the language. It’s some kind of—like, fractal–"

"We can’t even cut power. It booted us out totally. The bridge is down again."

"I’m trying from our—we can’t even use our log-in."

"The back door–"

"The back door is blocked, dummy!"

He touched down in the back yard, already hearing police sirens starting to converge. There was a basement window lit in the small, off-white house, and through the grubby window he could see a couple of computer screens and three people. He walked over and bent down, tapping on the window, and was rewarded with three wide-eyed stares. He smiled back at them.

"Need a lift?"

 

\------------

Later that night, a third story hotel room balcony was the site of another Superman touchdown. A quick scan through the sliding door and curtain found the living area occupied, the resident sitting on the couch with her injured leg up on the coffee table, watching television. She had foregone the hotel restaurant and had a plate of Chinese delivery, with her open laptop sitting on the couch next to her.

He lightly tapped on the window, just loud enough to be heard over the television. Her head twitched. He tapped again. She grabbed the remote and muted the television, clearly hearing his third tap. She froze for a moment in slack-jawed disbelief, then set her plate aside and got to her feet. After another wavering hesitation, she carefully hobbled over to the door and moved the curtain aside slightly with one finger. There was just enough ambient light out, and the room lights were dark enough, that she saw what the tapping was. He immediately got what Lois puckishly called "Superman face number two": Eyes wide and both hands covering the mouth.

She nearly lost her balance and caught herself on the arm of the couch, pushing herself back to a stable stance, then hesitatingly reached for the curtain again. Her mind had moved from frozen astonishment to calculation and evaluation in just a few moments and she paused several times, but finally twisted the bolt.

"I don’t believe it," she said, staring at him as the door slid open. "You’re...."

"Superman?" he tried with a wry smile.

"Real!"

"Dr. Bonnie Barstow?"

The tiny sounds of confusion she was making coalesced into words. "How did you know my name?"

"Lucky guess?" Her expression immediately started to come down and he grinned sheepishly. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

There were another few moments of confusion, and then she abruptly looked down and around, flustered. She was dressed in pastel silk with elastic waist pants wide enough for the cast on her ankle, a sleeveless top, and a light, loose jacket. "I–I’m—s—um—" she stammered, then backed off from the opening, running a hand self-consciously through silvered brunette hair. He stepped inside, sliding the door partially shut behind him. She looked down at herself and then around the hotel room, looking like she was about to launch into an apology for appearances, and he slipped in first.

"I wanted to thank you," he began frankly as her startled gaze came back to him in surprise. "You were one of two people who gave me an early warning about the bridge today. It enabled me to get there in time to save people from being crushed, and you also found the perpetrators far faster than I could have. The police caught them red-handed with the incriminating web sites and hacker programs still open on their machines."

Her gaze wandered a moment. "That’s.....that’s...I–but don’t use my name, please," she suddenly blurted, wide moss-green eyes coming back to him. "I don’t want anybody–"

"It’s alright, I won’t," he said quickly, holding up a placating hand. "I’m no reporter." He saw relief flash across her face, and just as quickly it was replaced with guardedness. He held her gaze for a moment, expectantly, but when she didn’t offer the information, he took the first step. "I have to admit I was hoping to meet and thank the other person in, well, person," he said delicately, watching her expression. Her eyes were on him but it was clear that her attention wasn’t. Subtle changes flicked over her face and her eyes seemed to shiver almost like REM sleep. She was clearly sorting through strategies and odds and consequences, weighing the situation.

After a full 30 seconds she finally focused on him, still guarded. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Try me."

 

\-----------

One of the harder things that Clark had to do with some frequency was leaving to go somewhere at an odd time without telling Lois what he was doing, where he was going, or why. A lot of the time, she knew what it was even before he left, but occasionally he had to keep something to himself. His strategy of how he presented these disappearances to her changed from month to month, but she was adjusting to the consequences of their relationship. This time he did tell her he was going to talk to someone, that it was non-critical, and that it was to "verify that certain loose ends from the bridge incident were cleaned up." That loose end was burning curiosity over the identity of the person...or entity...who had been on the other side of that phone call.

That was why he was heading to a large lot shared by several small businesses at 11:30 at night on the east side of Los Angeles. The air was starting to cool from a warm mid-March day and the patterned grid of lights slid past him 300 feet below. Brightly lit arteries of red and white lights flowed through the city beneath him, despite the late hour, and a fainter tracery of lights marked the side streets. The cloud cover had returned after its brief absence that day, and the reflected light illuminated the land to a state of twilight, instead of midnight. He recognized highways and used business buildings as landmarks, finding his way to the agreed-on location.

The lot was large, over twenty acres, and was nearly empty with only a handful of vehicles remaining. There were a couple of raised islands of grass with small trees, and he landed near one of them. Hearing was as alert as his sight, and he heard it before he saw it—a faint hissing whine, as though from a small turbine engine, accompanied by a somewhat more conventional-sounding engine, if an eight-cylinder with the promise of endless horsepower could be considered conventional.

He located the source of the sound, a dark quicksilver gray, not quite black, moving on the street at the north end of the lot. It slowed to a near stop, then slowly drove up the apron into the lot, stopping again as soon as its wheels were level. The only lights were two very small fog lights low on the front end and between them, an oscillating red light, shifting back and forth restlessly. The car rolled forward again a few more feet and stopped, for all the world looking like the expression of someone daunted but trying to screw up their courage. Then it finally picked up a deliberate 15 mph pace towards him across the lot.

He wandered slowly away from the island of green, farther into the open, and his first clear look almost drew an admiring whistle. Living in Metropolis, he saw his share of high-end machines, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Jaguars, and the like, but he had to admit, this one was pretty. The whistle died when he took a look through the body, though, seeing the decidedly non-standard-issue equipment package. Scanners, jamming equipment, at least one winch, at least two small rocket boosters, and more. Of primary importance, though, was the fact that no one was inside the car. This combined with the presence of a briefcase-sized computer under the car’s hood made it click in his head.

"You’re the AI..." he said with an open-mouthed smile of wonder as the vehicle slowed within ten meters of him. Dr. Barstow had never quite made it clear what the appearance would be. The emphasis had been on deciding on a meeting place and time and working out confidentiality, and appearance wasn’t dwelt on.

"My goodness." The voice Clark had heard in the phone call burst out in a near gasp of frank astonishment, as though it had been holding its breath. Score yet another point for unbelievable sophistication in an AI, he thought. The red light was flashing back and forth at a faster clip now, making several passes per second.

"You’re the...." He fumbled for an appropriate word, then started over. "You were the one talking to Dr. Barstow on the phone today? And heard about the bridge over the police scanner?"

The aristocratic voice actually spluttered in astonishment for a moment, finally settling on a disbelieving "Would you care to guess how many times I have amazed myself with footage of someone _lifting a semi truck_ into the air?"

Hearing an upper crust-accented AI fall on its virtual face was more than enough to make him laugh, as much from the willing takedown of a confident, entitled voice as from the unlikely source of the voice. "Off-hand guess, fifty?"

"Oh, please," came the derisive answer. "I’m a computer. Try again. And anyone can listen to a police scanner. What you did was on an entirely different scale."

"Well, you did still help," Superman said, coming down from the laugh a little. "If I had gotten there sixty seconds later, I’m pretty sure there’d be funeral planning going on right now."

"I just played secretary," the car said modestly. "You did the real life-saving. If it had been up to me alone, there would have been fatalities. It took me a bit to block the hackers and halt the lift."

"You did that?"

"Yes. I also determined the physical location of the perpetrators and sent the information to the authorities, but again, if not for you, the case against them wouldn’t be nearly as strong."

Superman shook his head. "I can’t believe you’re an A—wait a minute. Do you...uh...have, like, a name?" he asked tentatively.

"Oh, excuse me my manners," the voice said, sounding flustered, and Superman had to stop another laugh of amazement. "The formal introduction is that I am the voice of the Knight Industries Two Thousand micro-processor. K-I-T-T, or KITT, if you prefer," he said matter-of-factly, but with a hint of pride. "And you, sir, need absolutely no introduction whatsoever," he finished, with what sounded like a breath of amazed laughter.

"You know, there’s a convention going on right now on artificial intelligence, and I’m pretty sure you’d blow them all away–"

"I prefer to stay as far away from it as I can possibly get, thank you very much," the voice, KITT, said tartly. "I’m not necessarily known for being shy, but neither am I an exhibitionist. Oh, and by the way," he added, "since you haven’t guessed, I’ll tell you. One thousand, one hundred and sixty-two."

"Wwww...what—"

"The number of times I’ve run the bridge footage. So far, at least."

He had been listening to the voice very carefully, as this was its only form of expression, lacking facial features or gestures, and only now started to look at the body. "If you’re...what, 35 years old?....what...?" He waved a hand at the clearly late-model car.

"The body?"

"Yeah. This couldn’t have been..." he trailed off, slowly walking around the vehicle.

"It’s my fourth, actually. It’s a 2015 Callaway Chevrolet Corvette SC627. But I still have a soft spot for my original one—a 1982 Pontiac TransAm. Black, of course."

Superman had reached the back of the car and caught a brief red flash through the back window, apparently on the dash.

"What’s the red...?"

"Red what? The voice modulator?" KITT guessed. Superman saw three red bars flash in synch with the vocal cadence.

"I think that’s a yes," he said absently, continuing his inspection. "You know, for not being an exhibitionist, you do look pretty sweet."

"Thank you very much. And you look veeerrry...." An AI mulling over a tactful answer made Superman laugh as much as the vocal hesitation. "...very here with bells on!" came the slightly desperate answer.

"I’ll let you in on a little secret," he began, but was cut off.

"You know what? Don’t," came the suddenly serious answer. "I don’t know how I’d feel, protecting information pertinent to you. And I was hoping I could..." The way the voice dwindled almost sounded like a malfunction, but then it returned, sounding a little timid. "I was hoping I could keep my recordings of this encounter. Just the standard audio and visual–"

"Why would that be a problem?" Superman stopped by the driver’s door. "You can keep it."

"No–the anamorphic equalizer is capable of x-ray, infrared, ultraviolet, and thermal analyses, among a few others," KITT said apologetically. "You have a dramatically different profile in nearly all–"

"That’s not sensitive information," Superman said reassuringly. "Nothing you’ve seen or heard from me tonight is anything like classified information. Do you get...like, do you have your files or information looked through regularly? Do you ever get hacked?"

"Generally, no and no. My libraries and other retained information sets would only be gone through if there was a problem, and there almost never is. It’s only happened twice, and both times it was very restricted segments that were corrupted. As for hacking...goodness..." The dread in the voice sounded so authentic that Superman practically expected to see the car shudder. "I was hacked in my early days, but I have a proprietary firewall that’s put an end to that."

"Inferno," Superman said suddenly. "That’s what you used to stop the hackers, right?"

"Yes. It’s in a unique code and has a configuration tailored for me, and I admit I can be aggressive when it comes to intrusion prevention. But in any case, as I said, I’d be a bit nervous about being responsible for that level of intelligence."

"Now you’re telling me classified information."

"Not precisely," KITT said hesitantly. "Knowing Inferno is there is one thing. Going up against it....well, good luck. You’ll need it."

"Is that your primary function? Your purpose? Your workshop here seems to go beyond that," he said, looking along the length of the car.

"Partly, yes, but I’m certainly not the best, just reasonably capable. I guess you could consider me a kind of ace in the hole. Look up FLAGNet.org to get an idea of the work we do."

Superman grimaced. "You know, I could be here ‘til Tuesday, asking you questions...." Not to mention, the reporter in me is shaking the cage, he thought.

"Oh, dear, I’m not keeping you, am I?" KITT said with genuine worry, and the engine growled to life.

Superman shook his head. "No, you’re not. I just wanted to thank you for what you did, and yes, I admit, it’s also curiosity, but I have to cut it off somewhere or I’ll seriously screw up my calender," he said ruefully.

"If you want...." There was a positively calculating hesitation. "I...have an e-mail address...."

It started out as an inward groan and ended up coming out audibly, sliding into speech. "I don’t," Superman answered, with something like anguish.

"I understand," KITT said softly.

After a beat, realization hit. "Wait a minute.... you have an _e-mail address?_ " He started laughing.

"I do," KITT said in a small voice, but then added sharply, "but I’m not on Twitter and I don’t do Facebook. Call me old-fashioned but I have no interest in inane comments about what color you’re painting your house or something silly you found at the beach. I’ll do necessary research in them and that’s all."

"This conversation is not over," Superman said around a laugh, with an emphatic finger point. "We will meet again and we will talk."

"It was an honor to meet you," KITT said sincerely as Superman started to back away. "Thank you for letting me keep the record of this, if that’s still the case. I suppose I call it my equivalent of an autograph."

"Thank you for letting me selfishly indulge my curiosity. It’s an honor and pleasure to meet you as well, and yes, it’s good to keep the record." He raised a hand in farewell, and as soon as the wondering question flicked through his mind, he got an answer—the main headlights flashed twice, in quick succession.

He was in the air about 150 feet, watching the enigmatic-appearing dark gray Corvette trace a precise path out of the lot and back to a highway access, when the ‘oh, what the hell’ fuse was lit in his mind. He drew precisely even with the car, still at altitude, and said softly, "KITT, if your hearing is anywhere near as acute as mine....tell me your email address."

The AI had fascinated and delighted him on almost every single exchange, and didn’t disappoint on this final one, either. There was very definitely a smile in the voice as he heard, "It’s KnInTwTh@FLAGNet.org, and you can be assured of strict confidentiality."

"As can you," Superman answered. "Thank you."

"Thank you as well, and farewell...until next time."

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing except for the mistakes. I have some head canon in there (hello corvette) and random red herrings that lead nowhere (yo Firesafe), and I admit I have no damn idea what I'm doing with hackers. I know it involves computers and cans of pop and that's about it. The whole line that started it all was a "phone call with a sparkling 35-year-old". I fully expect someone to add a 6-word comment that renders the whole thing stupid and impossible.


End file.
